A young millennial finally pops in “Job,” the tense and twisty new play that opened on Broadway at the Hayes Theater.
Max Wolf Friedlich’s spicy drama is a collision of all of those essays and studies you’ve read about that age group’s unique tendencies — especially their desire to get paid by doing “meaningful work,” but also the bubbling cauldron of twenty-first-century burdens and constant stress that define them.
The first relatable office quality we witness is a woman’s burnout — only taken to a terrifying extreme.
The play begins as Jane (Sydney Lemmon) stands in the therapy practice of Loyd (Peter Friedman) shakily pointing a gun at him.
She’s snapped, and is instantly overcome with regret. Even once the firearm is coaxed safely back in her bag, it becomes a third character; a constant reminder that this is no ordinary billable hour.
Jane, who could clearly use some PTO, has just had a breakdown at her California tech job. Out of nowhere, she started shrieking uncontrollably while opportunist coworkers filmed her — and the outburst became a social media meme.
Doesn’t get much more millennial or Gen Z than that.
Counterintuitively, she also longs to return to work for this demanding employer, the specifics of which she’s conspicuously vague about, as tech employees sometimes are. And the only way she can is if Loyd writes her a doctor’s letter of recommendation.
So far, it’s, er, not going great. Still, they chat and Loyd tries to unpack what happened at work… while not getting shot.
The chill doc, who was obviously once knee-deep in West Coast counter-culture, is now in his sixties, and the duo’s generational divide is brought up in off-kilter ways.
Jane, for instance, takes issue with Baby Boomers’ glorification of hippies, insisting they stood for nothing more than “aesthetics.”
“To be anti-war you had to wear a tie-dye shirt and grow your hair out,” she says mockingly. “And so now, today, I’m not allowed to have ‘good politics’ and wear Lululemon.”
But “Job” is not some sort of uber-serious, non-musical “Kids!” from “Bye Bye Birdie.”
Friedlich’s smart and often very funny script actually shares a lot in common with those of Emerald Fennell, the writer-director of the films “Promising Young Woman” and “Saltburn.”
Both scribes are not only able to take relevant issues and wrap them in entertaining, sexy packages. For much of their intellectual stripteases, you’re not watching what you think you’re watching.
There are clues dotted along director Michael Herwitz’s staging that suggest something is amiss. After one person’s probing remark, the stage will abruptly darken save for a colored block and garbled, freaky sound will play.
Does that represent a repressed memory? The aftermath of the dramatic day at Jane’s office? Could it be the result of everybody’s favorite word to hate on — a trigger? All is revealed in the end.
And, to the credit of Lemmon and Friedman’s unfailingly present performances, we’re not too focused on the finish line until they jarringly thrust us across it.
Jane is a tricky part because she begins with what for most characters would be a climax, and then must simultaneously take a breath while keeping the stakes high.
Lemmon, as though snatched from a start-up, achieves that balancing act by convincingly capturing the potential energy of a fatigued worker, consumed by 24-7 duties and desk-bound salads, till she cracks. We all know a few of those.
Friedman, meanwhile, dealt with his share of high-pressure situations as Frank on HBO’s “Succession.” The actor maintains a calm, studious demeanor while never giving into tired psychiatrist tropes and maintaining an appealing air of mystery.
A word about Friedlich’s ending: It’s an impactful fireworks display, to be sure, and leaves the door open just enough to make for a lively barstool conversation afterwards.
And yet a huge coincidence that enables this conclusion has nagged at me ever since. Plays thrive on right-place-right-time scenarios, of course, but this one’s a whopper.
Although the last scene aims, I think, to be a 2020s answer to John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt,” it took me out a little as I dwelled on the construction more so than the characters, exciting though it all undeniably is.
The wrap-up does the job, but there’s always room for improvement.
